I love logic puzzles. Beyond that, I love games that make me think, but also leave a warm, fuzzy feeling at the end. Is This Seat Taken? feels like a nice daydream, or a film you watch with the family just to spend time together. Here’s what I mean.

Is This Seat Taken? is a logic-based puzzle game where you have to arrange groups of characters based on their seating preferences. You might be setting seating placements at a banquet, on a bus, or even speed-dating. Across six major cities, you’ll experience a variety of levels, each carrying a piece of an overarching narrative.

There are smaller narratives, such as families going on trips or groups of friends traveling together, that are rather understated. Then there is the main story, which shows a young girl trying to find her place in the world, pursuing a love of acting.

You don’t follow her directly, of course. Instead, you arrange seating placements across a variety of transportation locales, as well as things like classrooms. Her story intersects with these locations, and as you play, a narrative starts to weave itself into place. It is very well done, and the logic puzzles are challenging, but not overly difficult.

The difficulty comes in dealing with preferences such as characters being averse to cologne scent or musky body odor. Just like in real life, you have to arrange passengers in such a way so that the smells of less clean (or weirdly excessively scented) passengers aren’t a problem.

Overall, Is This Seat Taken? offers about 8-10 hours of gameplay, but it is time well spent. The developers spent a lot of time and care in crafting each level, and the puzzles are challenging but fun. I really hope that we see more levels as DLC, because I would love to play more of these logic-type puzzles. Perhaps puzzles that deal with things like school bus seating, cafeteria lunches, or all sorts of other quirky settings.

The developers could even take this into themed levels, such as holiday things in Santa’s Workshop, separating humans from vampires, or all sorts of other level concepts. I really hope people enjoy Is This Seat Taken? as much as I have. It was an absolute joy to play.

A PC Review Copy of Is This Seat Taken? was provided by Wholesome Games Presents for the purposes of this review.

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Is This Seat Taken?

$9.99

10

Score

10.0/10

Pros

• Fun Logic Puzzles
• Heartwarming Story
• Slowly evolving mechanics
• Great sense of humor
• Easily Buildable concept via Mods or DLC